DOJ warns Kennedy Center could be knocked down if renovations don’t move forward

The Trump administration said it may need to demolish the Kennedy Center if a plan to close the building for two years as part of a controversial renovation project pushed by President Trump and the organization’s board of trustees is blocked by a federal judge.

In a Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said the center’s “dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit” conditions, in addition to millions in financial losses, put the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy in a “financial and structural death spiral” that will require it to close for renovations.

“Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years,” lawyers for the federal government wrote.

There are no official existing plans to tear down the almost 55-year-old performing arts center. But the warning could raise the stakes in a monthslong legal dispute over the center, which Mr. Trump and his handpicked board of trustees have sought to overhaul.

Lawyers for Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a board member who filed a lawsuit over the changes to the Kennedy Center, skewered Tuesday’s filing.

“This is a not-so-subtle threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the President doesn’t get his way,” said attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky. “This is unconscionable, it is unbecoming of the Department of Justice to even put this in a filing, and we will answer in court.”

The Kennedy Center’s board voted earlier this month to close the center and add Mr. Trump’s name to its facade, marking its second attempt to make those sweeping changes.

Less than three months earlier, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper barred the center’s closure and ordered Mr. Trump’s name to be removed from the building, ruling in Beatty’s favor. Construction crews removed the president’s name from the facade, but the front portico of the building has been covered by a construction tarp since then, concealing most of its name.

In his May ruling, Cooper found the board was “derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center” by moving to close the institution, calling the decision to cease operations during renovations “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.” Cooper said he was not “categorically” barring the center from closing its doors or moving forward with construction, but wanted to ensure the board followed “certain minimum requirements imposed by law.”

During a mid-August meeting that Mr. Trump called into, the Kennedy Center’s board approved closure plans yet again. The board also voted in favor of adding the phrase “Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump” to the end of the center’s formal name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and moved to rename the physical site as the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” Prior to Cooper’s ruling, the board had attempted to rename the organization altogether as the Trump-Kennedy Center.

In court filings last week, the Trump administration said it will pause its latest round of planned changes to the building until Sept. 8.

Last week, Beatty once again asked the court to block the president’s name from being added to the building, calling it “déjà vu all over again.” Beatty’s lawyers have argued that only Congress, not the Kennedy Center’s board, may change the name of the building. 

“In a new and breathtaking act of defiance of Congress and of this Court, Defendants have voted to return President Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center’s façade. This time, Trump’s name will appear on the building’s front portico not once, but twice,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote, calling the repeated additions of Mr. Trump’s name to the building “a transparent effort to rename the Center in President Trump’s honor.”

Cooper is set to hear arguments from lawyers for Beatty on Thursday.

In response, the Justice Department defended the center’s board of trustees, arguing that the resolution is “completely lawful,” and accused Beatty of a “hyper-partisan effort to oppose any recognition of President Trump’s contributions to the Center.”

“Even Beatty should prefer a healthy, restored Center to a decaying hulk that is doomed to inevitable destruction or collapse,” the Justice Department wrote. “The Court should allow the Board and President Trump to bring the Center back to a level of greatness far higher than it has ever had before. This would be the fitting tribute that President Kennedy so well deserves.”